Inventor Genius Quotes

Vision without execution is hallucination. .. Skill without imagination is barren. Leonardo [da Vinci] knew how to marry observation and imagination, which made him history’s consummate innovator.

He wrested the world's whereabouts from the stars, and locked the secret in a pocket watch.

Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also.

Paine suffered then, as now he suffers not so much because of what he wrote as from the misinterpretations of others... He disbelieved the ancient myths and miracles taught by established creeds. But the attacks on those creeds - or on persons devoted to them - have served to darken his memory, casting a shadow across the closing years of his life. When Theodore Roosevelt termed Tom Paine a 'dirty little atheist' he surely spoke from lack of understanding. It was a stricture, an inaccurate charge of the sort that has dimmed the greatness of this eminent American. But the true measure of his stature will yet be appreciated. The torch which he handed on will not be extinguished. If Paine had ceased his writings with 'The Rights of Man' he would have been hailed today as one of the two or three outstanding figures of the Revolution. But 'The Age of Reason' cost him glory at the hands of his countrymen - a greater loss to them than to Tom Paine. I was always interested in Paine the inventor. He conceived and designed the iron bridge and the hollow candle; the principle of the modern central draught burner. The man had a sort of universal genius. He was interested in a diversity of things; but his special creed, his first thought, was liberty. Traducers have said that he spent his last days drinking in pothouses. They have pictured him as a wicked old man coming to a sorry end. But I am persuaded that Paine must have looked with magnanimity and sorrow on the attacks of his countrymen. That those attacks have continued down to our day, with scarcely any abatement, is an indication of how strong prejudice, when once aroused, may become. It has been a custom in some quarters to hold up Paine as an example of everything bad. The memory of Tom Paine will outlive all this. No man who helped to lay the foundations of our liberty - who stepped forth as the champion of so difficult a cause - can be permanently obscured by such attacks. Tom Paine should be read by his countrymen. I commend his fame to their hands. {The Philosophy of Paine, June 7, 1925}

Norbert the Nutjob may have been a maniac, but lunacy and genius are very close together, and it had to be admitted, he was a great Dreamer. Perhaps the inventor-madmen of the Future will dream its like again.

One of the best examples of a polymath is Leonardo da Vinci. Born in Italy in 1452, Leonardo was a sculptor, painter, architect, mathematician, musician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, botanist, geologist, cartographer and writer. Although he received an informal education that included geometry, Latin and mathematics, he was essentially an autodidact, or a self-taught individual.

Inventors and geniuses, at the beginning of their careers (and very often at the end as well), have almost always been regarded in society as no more than fools—that is a most routine observation, well known to everyone.

That room was Rolandsen’s world. Rolandsen was not just irresponsibility and inebriation, he was also great thinker and inventor. There was a smell of acids that permeated the corridor and came to the notice of every visitor. Rolandsen made no secret of the fact that he had all these medicaments there solely to disguise the aroma of all the brandy he consumed. But this was part of an act designed purely to give himself an air of inscrutability.

Thinking outside of the box keeps you from suffocating inside of one.

But the question for our purposes is whether the broad pattern of world history would have been altered significantly if some genius inventor had not been born at a particular place and time. The answer is clear: there has never been any such person. All recognized famous inventors had capable predecessors and successors and made their improvements at a time when society was capable of using their product.

Having established itself securely on shipboard, the chronometer was soon taken for granted, like any other essential thing, and the whole question of its contentious history, along with the name of its original inventor, dropped from the consciousness of the seamen who used it every day.

He had a deep respect for life, a special compassion for animals, and great awe and reverence for nature’s complexity and abundance. While a brilliant inventor and designer himself, he always thought that nature’s ingenuity was vastly superior to human design. He felt that we would be wise to respect nature and learn from her.

Flawless and faultless outcomes are not products of lawless and careless people. No lawless person is a genuine innovator. To your skillfulness, add good manners; to your willfulness, add carefulness!

In reality, Hemingway didn't appeal to plumbers or roofers who read books; he was a rich man's writer, with the vocabulary and hunting instinct of the blue-collar workingman. But Hemingway had the unfailing genius of an inventor, and each book he wrote was new, sparkling new, something that hadn't been seen in American prose, something that merged common speech with uncommon clarity, something that verged on poetry. 

And what is ultimate reality? One of mankind’s greatest geniuses and inventors, Nikola Tesla, gave us a clue when he said, “If you want to know the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.

who most deserves to be dubbed the inventor of the electronic digital computer: John Atanasoff, a professor who worked almost alone at Iowa State, or the team led by John Mauchly and Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania.

but the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors . . . but always most in the common people.

Architect of quantum theories, brash young group leader on the atomic bomb project, inventor of the ubiquitous Feynman diagram, ebullient bongo player and storyteller, Richard Phillips Feynman was the most brilliant, iconoclastic, and influential physicist of modern times.

His plan incorporated the packet-switching concept of Paul Baran and Donald Davies, the suggestion for standardized IMPs proposed by Wes Clark, the theoretical insights of J. C. R. Licklider, Les Earnest, and Leonard Kleinrock, and the contributions of many other inventors.

In fact, neither explanation does Jobs and Apple justice. As the case of the forgotten Iowa inventor John Atanasoff shows, conception is just the first step. What really matters is execution. Jobs and his team took Xerox’s ideas, improved them, implemented them, and marketed them.

I was in full digression! far from the subject!...my colonel was losing track...rapidly, of my story! my story!...my own story!...the gifts that I had personally received from Heaven!...yet I had insisted, every time! truly extraordinary gifts!...I'd made him repeat them a hundred times!...enough so he'd remember! that I was the only true genius! the century's only writer! the proof: that no one ever spoke of me!...everyone was jealous! Nobel! no Nobel! they had all joined forces to have me executed!...they could just go fuck off!...drop dead! since it was a question of death between me and them! I'll send their readers packing! all their readers! I'll make the public grow sick of their books! cabal! no cabal! since there was no room for two styles!...it was mine or theirs!...crawl or breastroke!...you understand!...the only inventor of the century! is me! me! me right here! the only genius, you might say! damned or not!...

The Industrial Revolution was based on two grand concepts that were profound in their simplicity. Innovators came up with ways to simplify endeavors by breaking them into easy, small tasks that could be accomplished on assembly lines. Then, beginning in the textile industry, inventors found ways to mechanize steps so that they could be performed by machines, many of them powered by steam engines. Babbage, building on ideas from Pascal and Leibniz, tried to apply these two processes to the production of computations, creating a mechanical precursor to the modern computer. His most significant conceptual leap was that such machines did not have to be set to do only one process, but instead could be programmed and reprogrammed through the use of punch cards. Ada saw the beauty and significance of that enchanting notion, and she also described an even more exciting idea that derived from it: such machines could process not only numbers but anything that could be notated in symbols.

I will remark, here, that James W. Paige, the little bright-eyed, alert, smartly dressed inventor of the machine, is a most extraordinary compound of business thrift and commercial insanity; of cold calculation and jejune sentimentality; of veracity and falsehood; of fidelity and treachery; of nobility and baseness; of pluck and cowardice; of wasteful liberality and pitiful stinginess; of solid sense and weltering moonshine; of towering genius and trivial ambitions; of merciful bowels and a petrified heart; of colossal vanity and— But there the opposites stop. His vanity stands alone, sky-piercing, as sharp of outline as an Egyptian monolith. It is the only unpleasant feature in him that is not modified, softened, compensated by some converse characteristic.

Before you are a champion you are an amateur. Before you are a general you are a warrior. Before you are a politician you are a constituent. Before you are a president you are a citizen. Before you are a pastor you are a parishioner. Before you are a pope you are a priest. Before you are a teacher you are a student. Before you are a guru you are a disciple. Before you are an inventor you are a scientist. Before you are a judge you are a lawyer. Before you are a maestro you are an apprentice. Before you are a coach you are an athlete. Before you are a genius you are a talent. A humble amateur is better than a proud champion. A humble warrior is better than a proud general. A humble constituent is better than a proud politician. A humble citizen is better than a proud president. A humble parishioner is better than a proud pastor. A humble priest is better than a proud pope. A humble student is better than a proud teacher. A humble disciple is better than a proud guru. A humble scientist is better than a proud inventor. A humble lawyer is better than a proud judge. A humble apprentice is better than a proud expert. A humble athlete is better than a proud coach. A humble talent is better than a proud genius.

Innovators and creators are persons who can to a higher degree than average accept the condition of aloneness—that is, the absence of supportive feedback from their social environment. They are more willing to follow their vision, even when it takes them far from the mainland of the human community. Unexplored spaces do not frighten them—or not, at any rate, as much as they frighten those around them. This is one of the secrets of their power—the great artists, scientists, inventors, industrialists. Is not the hallmark of entrepreneurship (in art or science no less than in business) the ability to see a possibility that no one else sees—and to actualize it? Actualizing one’s vision may of course require the collaboration of many people able to work together toward a common goal, and the innovator may need to be highly skillful at building bridges between one group and another. But this is a separate story and does not affect my basic point. That which we call “genius” has a great deal to do with independence, courage, and daring—a great deal to do with nerve. This is one reason we admire it. In the literal sense, such “nerve” cannot be taught; but we can support the process by which it is learned. If human happiness, well-being, and progress are our goals, it is a trait we must strive to nurture—in our child-rearing practices, in our schools, in our organizations, and first of all in ourselves.

The tale of their teamwork is important because we don’t often focus on how central that skill is to innovation. There are thousands of books celebrating people we biographers portray, or mythologize, as lone inventors. I’ve produced a few myself. Search the phrase “the man who invented” on Amazon and you get 1,860 book results. But we have far fewer tales of collaborative creativity, which is actually more important in understanding how today’s technology revolution was fashioned. It can also be more interesting.

A lot of the credit, too, should go to Turing, for developing the concept of a universal computer and then being part of a hands-on team at Bletchley Park. How you rank the historic contributions of the others depends partly on the criteria you value. If you are enticed by the romance of lone inventors and care less about who most influenced the progress of the field, you might put Atanasoff and Zuse high. But the main lesson to draw from the birth of computers is that innovation is usually a group effort, involving collaboration between visionaries and engineers, and that creativity comes from drawing on many sources.

Simply put, within AS, there is a wide range of function. In truth, many AS people will never receive a diagnosis. They will continue to live with other labels or no label at all. At their best, they will be the eccentrics who wow us with their unusual habits and stream-of-consciousness creativity, the inventors who give us wonderfully unique gadgets that whiz and whirl and make our life surprisingly more manageable, the geniuses who discover new mathematical equations, the great musicians and writers and artists who enliven our lives. At their most neutral, they will be the loners who never now quite how to greet us, the aloof who aren't sure they want to greet us, the collectors who know everyone at the flea market by name and date of birth, the non-conformists who cover their cars in bumper stickers, a few of the professors everyone has in college. At their most noticeable, they will be the lost souls who invade our personal space, the regulars at every diner who carry on complete conversations with the group ten tables away, the people who sound suspiciously like robots, the characters who insist they wear the same socks and eat the same breakfast day in and day out, the people who never quite find their way but never quite lose it either.

And barbarians were inventors not only of philosophy, but almost of every art. The Egyptians were the first to introduce astrology among men. Similarly also the Chaldeans. The Egyptians first showed how to burn lamps, and divided the year into twelve months, prohibited intercourse with women in the temples, and enacted that no one should enter the temples from a woman without bathing. Again, they were the inventors of geometry. There are some who say that the Carians invented prognostication by the stars. The Phrygians were the first who attended to the flight of birds. And the Tuscans, neighbours of Italy, were adepts at the art of the Haruspex. The Isaurians and the Arabians invented augury, as the Telmesians divination by dreams. The Etruscans invented the trumpet, and the Phrygians the flute. For Olympus and Marsyas were Phrygians. And Cadmus, the inventor of letters among the Greeks, as Euphorus says, was a Phoenician; whence also Herodotus writes that they were called Phoenician letters. And they say that the Phoenicians and the Syrians first invented letters; and that Apis, an aboriginal inhabitant of Egypt, invented the healing art before Io came into Egypt. But afterwards they say that Asclepius improved the art. Atlas the Libyan was the first who built a ship and navigated the sea. Kelmis and Damnaneus, Idaean Dactyli, first discovered iron in Cyprus. Another Idaean discovered the tempering of brass; according to Hesiod, a Scythian. The Thracians first invented what is called a scimitar (arph), -- it is a curved sword, -- and were the first to use shields on horseback. Similarly also the Illyrians invented the shield (pelth). Besides, they say that the Tuscans invented the art of moulding clay; and that Itanus (he was a Samnite) first fashioned the oblong shield (qureos). Cadmus the Phoenician invented stonecutting, and discovered the gold mines on the Pangaean mountain. Further, another nation, the Cappadocians, first invented the instrument called the nabla, and the Assyrians in the same way the dichord. The Carthaginians were the first that constructed a triterme; and it was built by Bosporus, an aboriginal. Medea, the daughter of Æetas, a Colchian, first invented the dyeing of hair. Besides, the Noropes (they are a Paeonian race, and are now called the Norici) worked copper, and were the first that purified iron. Amycus the king of the Bebryci was the first inventor of boxing-gloves. In music, Olympus the Mysian practised the Lydian harmony; and the people called Troglodytes invented the sambuca, a musical instrument. It is said that the crooked pipe was invented by Satyrus the Phrygian; likewise also diatonic harmony by Hyagnis, a Phrygian too; and notes by Olympus, a Phrygian; as also the Phrygian harmony, and the half-Phrygian and the half-Lydian, by Marsyas, who belonged to the same region as those mentioned above. And the Doric was invented by Thamyris the Thracian. We have heard that the Persians were the first who fashioned the chariot, and bed, and footstool; and the Sidonians the first to construct a trireme. The Sicilians, close to Italy, were the first inventors of the phorminx, which is not much inferior to the lyre. And they invented castanets. In the time of Semiramis queen of the Assyrians, they relate that linen garments were invented. And Hellanicus says that Atossa queen of the Persians was the first who composed a letter. These things are reported by Seame of Mitylene, Theophrastus of Ephesus, Cydippus of Mantinea also Antiphanes, Aristodemus, and Aristotle and besides these, Philostephanus, and also Strato the Peripatetic, in his books Concerning Inventions. I have added a few details from them, in order to confirm the inventive and practically useful genius of the barbarians, by whom the Greeks profited in their studies. And if any one objects to the barbarous language, Anacharsis says, "All the Greeks speak Scythian to me." [...]

Many married women, faithful to family duty and their husbands, will at this point probably ask themselves why such strong men, so really good and kind, who are so vulnerable to women like Madame Marneffe, do not find the realization of their dreams and the fulfilment of their passions in their wives, especially when their wives are like Adeline Hulot. The reason is linked with one of the most fundamental mysteries of human nature. Love, which awakens the mind to joy and delight, the virile, austere pleasure of the most noble faculties of the soul, and sex, the vulgar commodity sold in the market, are two aspects of the same thing. Women capable of satisfying the hunger for both are geniuses in their own kind, and no more numerous than the great writers, artists, and inventors of a nation. Men of all kinds, the distinguished man and the fool, the Hulots as much as the Crevels, desire both an ideal love and pleasure. They are all in quest of that mysterious hermaphrodite, that rare work, which most often turns out to be a work in two volumes.

one stubborn glitch they couldn’t figure out: the program did a wonderful job spewing out data on the trajectory of artillery shells, but it just didn’t know when to stop. Even after the shell would have hit the ground, the program kept calculating its trajectory, “like a hypothetical shell burrowing through the ground at the same rate it had traveled through the air,” as Jennings described it. “Unless we solved that problem, we knew the demonstration would be a dud, and the ENIAC’s inventors and engineers would be embarrassed.”69 Jennings and Snyder worked late into the evening before the press briefing trying to fix it, but they couldn’t. They finally gave up at midnight, when Snyder needed to catch the last train to her suburban apartment. But after she went to bed, Snyder figured it out: “I woke up in the middle of the night thinking what that error was. . . . I came in, made a special trip on the early train that morning to look at a certain wire.” The problem was that there was a setting at the end of a “do loop” that was one digit off. She flipped the requisite switch and the glitch was fixed. “Betty could do more logical reasoning while she was asleep than most people can do awake,” Jennings later marveled. “While she slept, her subconscious untangled the knot that her conscious mind had been unable to.

It is so true, that the Socialists look upon mankind as a subject for social experiments, that if, by chance, they are not quite certain of the success of these experiments, they will request a portion of mankind, as a subject to experiment upon. It is well known how popular the ideaof trying all systems is, and one of their chiefs has been known seriously to demand of the Constituent Assembly a parish, with all its inhabitants, upon which to make his experiments. It is thus that an inventor will make a small machine before he makes one of the regular size. Thus the chemist sacrifices some substances, the agriculturist some seed and corner of his field, to make trial of an idea. But think of the difference between the gardener and his trees, between the inventor and his machine, between the chemist and his substances, between the agriculturist and his seed! The Socialist thinks, in all sincerity, that there is the same difference between himself and mankind. No wonder the politicians of the nineteenth century look upon society as an artifical production of the legislator's genius. This idea, the result of a classical education, has taken possession of all the thinkers and great writers of our country. To all these persons, the relations between mankind and the legislator appear to be the same as those that exist between the clay and the potter.

Interestingly enough, creative geniuses seem to think a lot more like horses do. These people also spend a rather large amount of time engaging in that favorite equine pastime: doing nothing. In his book Fire in the Crucible: The Alchemy of Creative Genius, John Briggs gathers numerous studies illustrating how artists and inventors keep their thoughts pulsating in a field of nuance associated with the limbic system. In order to accomplish this feat against the influence of cultural conditioning, they tend to be outsiders who have trouble fitting into polite society. Many creative geniuses don’t do well in school and don’t speak until they’re older, thus increasing their awareness of nonverbal feelings, sensations, and body language cues. Einstein is a classic example. Like Kathleen Barry Ingram, he also failed his college entrance exams. As expected, these sensitive, often highly empathic people feel extremely uncomfortable around incongruent members of their own species, and tend to distance themselves from the cultural mainstream. Through their refusal to fit into a system focusing on outside authority, suppressed emotion, and secondhand thought, creative geniuses retain and enhance their ability to activate the entire brain. Information flows freely, strengthening pathways between the various brain functions. The tendency to separate thought from emotion, memory, and sensation is lessened. This gives birth to a powerful nonlinear process, a flood of sensations and images interacting with high-level thought functions and aspects of memory too complex and multifaceted to distill into words. These elements continue to influence and build on each other with increasing ferocity. Researchers emphasize that the entire process is so rapid the conscious mind barely registers that it is happening, let alone what is happening. Now a person — or a horse for that matter — can theoretically operate at this level his entire life and never receive recognition for the rich and innovative insights resulting from this process. Those called creative geniuses continuously struggle with the task of communicating their revelations to the world through the most amenable form of expression — music, visual art, poetry, mathematics. Their talent for innovation, however, stems from an ability to continually engage and process a complex, interconnected, nonlinear series of insights. Briggs also found that creative geniuses spend a large of amount of time “doing nothing,” alternating episodes of intense concentration on a project with periods of what he calls “creative indolence.” Albert Einstein once remarked that some of his greatest ideas came to him so suddenly while shaving that he was prone to cut himself with surprise.

If you are a great warrior, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before the lowest opponent. If you are a great general, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before the lowest soldier. If you are a great politician, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before for the lowest constituent. If you are a great governor, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before for the lowest peasant. If you are a great president, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before the lowest citizen. If you are a great leader, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before for the lowest servant. If you are a great pastor, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before the lowest parishioner. If you are a great prophet, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before the lowest seer. If you are a great pope, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before the lowest priest. If you are a great teacher, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before for the lowest student. If you are a great guru, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before for the lowest disciple. If you are a great architect, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before the lowest mason. If you are a great engineer, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before the lowest mechanic. If you are a great inventor, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before for the lowest scientist. If you are a great doctor, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before for the lowest nurse. If you are a great judge, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before the lowest lawyer. If you are a great artist, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before the lowest apprentice. If you are a great coach, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before for the lowest athlete. If you are a great genius, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before for the lowest talent. If you are a great philanthropist, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before for the lowest beggar. In the school of patience, it is the long suffering who graduate. In the school of generosity, it is the kind who graduate. In the school of activism, it is the devoted who graduate. In the school of honor, it is the noble who graduate. In the school of wisdom, it is the prudent who graduate. In the school of knowledge, it is the curious who graduate. In the school of insight, it is the observant who graduate. In the school of understanding, it is the intelligent who graduate. In the school of success, it is the excellent who graduate. In the school of eminence, it is the influential who graduate. In the school of conquest, it is the fearless who graduate. In the school of enlightenment, it is the humble who graduate. In the school of courage, it is the hopeful who graduate. In the school of fortitude, it is the determined who graduate. In the school of leadership, it is servants who graduate. In the school of talent, it is the skilled who graduate. In the school of genius, it is the brilliant who graduate. In the school of greatness, it is the persevering who graduate. In the school of transcendence, it is the fearless who graduate. In the school of innovation, it is the creative who graduate.

The most impressive documentation of Europe’s rising creative powers may be found in the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). During their successive rediscoveries in modern times, these astonishing collections were mistakenly perceived as sketches of original inventions, products of an individual “Renaissance” genius. The misconception was due in part to the aesthetic quality of the drawings, and in part to a prevailing notion of the character of invention, an exaggeration of the contribution of the individual “inventor” and an underappreciation of the social nature of technical innovation.

I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident. They came by work. Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.’ – Thomas Edison, Inventor

Although Tesla’s work was a major factor in the success of the second Industrial Revolution, he died alone, impoverished, and largely shunned by the scientific community that once hailed him a genius.

Kirkus (starred review): A lucid, expertly researched biography of the brilliant Nikola Tesla. (Readers) will absolutely enjoy (Munson’s) sympathetic, insightful portrait. Booklist: Celebratory, comprehensive profile. ….A well-written, insightful addition to the legacy of this still-underappreciated visionary genius. Library Journal: Entrepreneurs, inventors, engineers, and futurists will find this biography inspiring. Gretchen Bakke (author of "The Grid"): Munson has provided us with an intimate tapestry of Tesla's life, personality, and inventions. Filled with quotes, and clearly researched with great care, Munson brings Tesla to life, not as a superhero but as a man—both ordinary and extraordinary. What surprised me, and proved to be one of the great pleasures of the book was to realize how much Tesla’s story is an immigrant story. Anne Pramaggiore (CEO of Commonwealth Edison): Tesla is an exactingly-researched history and wonderfully crafted tale of one of the most important and fascinating visionaries of the technological age. This book’s teachings have never been more relevant than in today’s world of digital transformation.

[On D. W. Griffith] Even in Griffith’s best work there is enough that is poor, or foolish, or merely old-fashioned, so that one has to understand, if by no means forgive, those who laugh indiscriminately at his good work and his bad. (With all that “understanding,” I look forward to killing, some day, some specially happy giggler at the exquisite scene in which the veteran comes home, in The Birth of a Nation) But even his poorest work was never just bad. Whatever may be wrong with it, there is in every instant, so well as I can remember, the unique purity and vitality of birth or of a creature just born and first exerting its unprecedented, incredible strength; and there are, besides, Griffith’s overwhelming innocence and magnanimity of spirit; his moral and poetic earnestness; his joy in his work; and his splendid intuitiveness, directness, common sense, daring, and skill as an inventor and as an artist. Aside from his talent or genius as an inventor and artist, he was all heart; and ruinous as his excesses sometimes were in that respect, they were inseparable from his virtues, and small beside them. He was remarkably good, as a rule, in the whole middle range of feeling, but he was at his best just short of his excesses, and he tended in general to work out toward the dangerous edge. He was capable of realism that has never been beaten and he might, if he had been able to appreciate his powers as a realist, have found therein his growth and salvation. But he seems to have been a realist only by accident, hit-and-run; essentially, he was a poet. He doesn’t appear ever to have realized one of the richest promises that movies hold, as the perfect medium for realism raised to the level of high poetry; nor, oddly enough, was he much of a dramatic poet. But in epic and lyrical and narrative visual poetry, I can think of nobody who has surpassed him, and of few to compare with him. And as a primitive tribal poet, combining something of the bard and the seer, he is beyond even Dovshenko, and no others of their kind have worked in movies.

The inventors of tools enhance civilization, but the author of ideas enables them to invent.

For too long, the creative world has focused on idea generation at the expense of idea execution. As the legendary inventor Thomas Edison famously said, “Genius is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent perspiration.” To make great ideas a reality, we must act, experiment, fail, adapt, and learn on a daily basis. 99U

The truth is that one of the hardest things I had to learn is how to fail. Henry Petroski is an author and professor of civil engineering at Duke University. One of the overarching concerns in his books is the importance of failure and its importance in how we design and how we learn. Read his wonderful book, The Evolution of Useful Things. Inventors design things because they are driven by the perceived failure of a current design. Is a function being properly performed or can it be improved? Petroski understands the necessity of failure in order to push an idea forward, whether it be on an engineering problem or one of technique or design. He quotes Thomas Edison: “Genius. Sticking to it is the genius . . . I failed my way to success.

The word polymath, derived from the Greek words meaning “to know much” or “very knowing,” has come to mean in common parlance a person of encyclopedic learning. Polymaths are not to be confused with dilettantes, who take up new subjects for amusement or pleasure. Polymaths master their activities to a significant degree and perceive the fundamental connections between them. The greatest polymaths of all, like the “Renaissance men” Leonardo da Vinci, Vesalius, and Michelangelo, seem capable of encompassing all that is known. Of course, no one has ever had truly encyclopedic knowledge, and that is not what we are calling for here. But it has long been observed by psychologists that people who are innovative tend to participate in a wider range of activities and develop a higher degree of skill in those activities than other people. Certainly that has been the case for virtually every artist, scientist, inventor, and humanist discussed in these pages, nearly all of whom can be called polymaths.

In dreaming about what he would like to become or achieve, his goals are invariably highly individualistic. He must become the composer, the solo performer, the genius scientist who makes the unique discovery. If he is to be noticed at all, then he must be centre stage. If he can’t be centre stage in an area of interest, then he must withdraw and resort to vitriolic criticism. … General role models for INTPs are individualistic, creative and perhaps enigmatic people. Innovative free-thinkers who follow their own new paths are usually greatly respected. Famous historical figures who attract the INTP’s greatest respect are scientists, composers, inventors and, in society, revolutionary leaders and noble visionaries who bring about major change. Above all, individualism is the key factor, while vision is the most highly prized asset.

We must resist the pedagogical tracking of different kinds of learners. We must reverse the trend toward early and narrow specialization of student interest and activity. For when we look closely at the formative years of productive artists, scientists, and inventors we find that although the strong enthusiasms of youth shaped their future contributions, they did not lead to them in any direct, disciplinary fashion.

Therefore, it is not off the point if, along with the forgotten feminine principles, there are no longer good carpets at the kings court and they need one, for they have again to find the pattern in of life. In this way the story tells us that the subtlety of the inventions of the unconscious and the secret design woven into a human life are infinitely more intelligent than human consciousness and more subtle and superior than man could invent. One is again and again overwhelmed by the genius of that unknown mysterious something in our psyche which is the inventor of our dreams, It picks elements from day impressions, from something the dreamer has read the evening before in the paper, or from a childhood memory, and makes a nice kind of potpourri out of it, and only when you have interpreted its meaning do you see the subtlety and the genius of each dream composition. Every night we have that carpet weaver at work within us, who makes those fantastically subtle patterns, so subtle that, unfortunately often after an hour's attempt to interpret them, we are unable to find out the meaning. We are just too clumsy and stupid to follow up the genius of that unknown spirit of the unconscious which invents dreams. But we can understand that this carpet is more subtly woven than any human could ever achieve.

But Seinfeld’s belief that streamlining creativity can kill it is bolstered by piles of studies—especially the folly of trying to reduce your team’s or organization’s failure rate. As psychologist Dean Keith Simonton documents, the most creative people don’t succeed at a higher rate than others. Renowned geniuses including Picasso, da Vinci, and physicist Richard Feynman had far more successes and failures than their unheralded colleagues. In every occupation Simonton studied, from composers, artists, and poets to inventors and scientists, the story is the same: “The most successful creators tend to be those with the most failures!

Lo importante es el camino, no la meta. No se trata solo del logro de algo increíble. Se trata del propio hecho de hacerlo, día tras día, de tener la oportunidad de participar en algo verdaderamente increíble.

For too long, the creative world has focused on idea generation at the expense of idea execution. As the legendary inventor Thomas Edison famously said, “Genius is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent perspiration.” To make great ideas a reality, we must act, experiment, fail, adapt, and learn on a daily basis.

legendary inventor Thomas Edison famously said, “Genius is 1 percent

Building upon existing ideas and inventions is another way to foster innovation. In fact, when you ask artists of all types where they get their inspiration, they can usually list others before them who set the stage for their work. Painters draw upon the tools, techniques, and approaches of other artists; musicians build upon the styles of other musicians they have heard; writers are influenced by literature they have read; and inventors build upon the creations of others. As Pablo Picasso is claimed to have said, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.

In fact, selling—rather than creating—inventions may have been Thomas Edison’s greatest talent. Many of the famous inventions from his laboratory were imagined and developed by his staff, not Edison. His assistant, Francis Jehl, lamented that Edison was a more skilled pitchman than inventor, that his “genius” was most reminiscent of master huckster and showman P. T. Barnum.

Contemporary observers as well as modern historians have found many reasons that explain Greg's venture, and with it why the much broader Industrial revolution, 'broke out' in this place, in northern England, and at this time, in the 1780s. The genius of British inventors, the size of the British market and its unusually deep integration, the geography of Britain with its easy access to waterborne transport, the importance of religious dissenters for thinking outside the box, and the creation of a state favorable to entrepreneurial initiative have all been cited. While none of these arguments are unimportant, they omit a core part of the story of the Industrial Revolution: its dependence on the globe-spanning system of war capitalism.

Rubin and those on down had the additional frustration of watching Jobs, in their view, wrongly take credit for innovations that were not his or Apple’s. Jobs was an amazing innovator who had an unparalleled sense for when to release a product, how to design the hardware and the software, and how to make consumers lust after it. No one else comes close to his record of doing this again and again. It was genius. But he didn’t invent most of the technology in the iPhone. What made Jobs so successful is that he never wanted to be first at anything. Business and technology history is littered with inventors who never made a dime off their inventions. Jobs understood that a multiyear gap always exists between when something is discovered and when it becomes viable as a consumer product.

Without law, who will protect the mother and child who are tomorrow’s strength? Who will protect the geniuses of the mind, the inventor, the artist who enriches the world but has not the power of money or physical ability to defend himself? Who will protect the wise who are old, and might fall victim to the powerful and foolish? Indeed who will protect the strong from themselves?

Edison’s pigheadedness on this matter was partly the result of his jealousy against Nikola Tesla, inventor of AC generators. Tesla, on the other hand, refused the Nobel Prize when it was offered to him and Edison jointly because he refused to appear on the same platform with Edison. Both of these geniuses were only capable of “objectivity” and science in certain limited laboratory conditions. If you think you have a higher “objectivity quotient” than either of them, why haven’t you been nominated for a Nobel prize?

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos explained youthful creativity in these words: “You have to have a certain childlike ability to not be trapped by your expertise. And that fresh look, that beginner’s mind, once you’re an expert, is unbelievably hard to maintain. But great inventors are always looking. They have a certain divine discontent. They may have seen something a thousand times and still, it occurs to them that that thing, even though they’re accustomed to it, could be improved.

When Rodin created The Thinker, perhaps one of the best-known public sculptures in the world, he gave physical form to his own proprioceptive imagination. A nude man, whom Rodin meant to represent all poets, all artists, all inventors, sits upon a rock in tense and intense contemplation. “What makes my Thinker think,” Rodin wrote, “is that he thinks not only with his brain, with his knitted brow, his distended nostrils, and compressed lips, but with every muscle of his arms, back and legs, with his clenched fist and gripping toes.

Every inventor, every man of originality has been religious and even fanatically so. Perverted by irreligious skepticism, the human mind is like waste land that produces nothing or is covered with weeds useless to man. At such a time even its natural fertility is an evil, for these weeds harden the soil by tangling and intertwining their roots and moreover create a barrier between the sky and the earth. Break up these accursed clods; destroy these fatally hardy weeds; call on every human aid; drive in the plow; dig deep to bring into contact the powers of the earth and the powers of the sky. Here, gentlemen, is the natural analogy to human intelligence opened or closed to divine knowledge. The natural sciences themselves are subject to the general law. Genius does not rely much on the slow crawl of logic. Its gait is free, its manner derives from inspiration; one can see its success, but no one has seen its progress....

The person with the most realistic numbers is Saul Griffith, a materials scientist and inventor who received a MacArthur “genius” award in 2007.

Nennius tells us, what Gildas omits, the name of the British soldier who won the crowning mercy of Mount Badon, and that name takes us out of the mist of dimly remembered history into the daylight of romance. There looms, large, uncertain, dim but glittering, the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Somewhere in the Island a great captain gathered the forces of Roman Britain and fought the barbarian invaders to the death. Around him, around his name and his deeds, shine all that romance and poetry can bestow. Twelve battles, all located in scenes untraceable, with foes unknown, except that they were heathen, are punctiliously set forth in the Latin of Nennius. Other authorities say, “No Arthur; at least, no proof of any Arthur.” It was only when Geoffrey of Monmouth six hundred years later was praising the splendours of feudalism and martial aristocracy that chivalry, honour, the Christian faith, knights in steel and ladies bewitching, are enshrined in a glorious circle lit by victory. Later these tales would be retold and embellished by the genius of Mallory, Spenser, and Tennyson. True or false, they have gained an immortal hold upon the thoughts of men. It is difficult to believe it was all an invention of a Welsh writer. If it was he must have been a marvellous inventor. Modern research has not accepted the annihilation of Arthur. Timidly but resolutely the latest and best-informed writers unite to proclaim his reality. They cannot tell when in this dark period he lived, or where he held sway and fought his battles. They are ready to believe however that there was a great British warrior, who kept the light of civilisation burning against all the storms that beat, and that behind his sword there sheltered a faithful following of which the memory did not fail. All four groups of the Celtic tribes which dwelt in the tilted uplands of Britain cheered themselves with the Arthurian legend, and each claimed their own region as the scene of his exploits. From Cornwall to Cumberland a search for Arthur’s realm or sphere has been pursued.The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning. One specimen of this method will suffice: "It is reasonably certain that a petty chieftain named Arthur did exist, probably in South Wales. It is possible that he may have held some military command uniting the tribal forces of the Celtic or highland zone or part of it against raiders and invaders (not all of them necessarily Teutonic). It is also possible that he may have engaged in all or some of the battles attributed to him; on the other hand, this attribution may belong to a later date." This is not much to show after so much toil and learning. Nonetheless, to have established a basis of fact for the story of Arthur is a service which should be respected. In this account we prefer to believe that the story with which Geoffrey delighted the fiction-loving Europe of the twelfth century is not all fancy. If we could see exactly what happened we should find ourselves in the presence of a theme as well founded, as inspired, and as inalienable from the inheritance of mankind as the Odyssey or the Old Testament. It is all true, or it ought to be; and more and better besides. And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round. Let us then declare that King Arthur and his noble knights, guarding the Sacred Flame of Christianity and the theme of a world order, sustained by valour, physical strength, and good horses and armour, slaughtered innumerable hosts of foul barbarians and set decent folk an example for all time.

France’s national image was the product of a collaboration between a king with a vision and some of the most brilliant artists, artisans, and craftspeople of all time—men and women who were the founding geniuses in domains as disparate as wine making, fashion accessorizing, jewelry design, cabinetry, codification of culinary technique, and hairstyling. There was a second collaboration: between Louis XIV and a series of brilliant inventors, the creators of everything from a revolutionary technology for glassmaking to a visionary pair of boots. Each of these areas seems modest enough in and of itself. All together, however, they added up to an amazingly powerful new entity. Thanks to Louis XIV, France had acquired a reputation as the country that had written the book on elegant living.

glory, at the Science Museum of London. Charles Babbage was a well-known scientist and inventor of the time. He had spent years working on his Difference Engine, a revolutionary mechanical calculator. Babbage was also known for his extravagant parties, which he called “gatherings of the mind” and hosted for the upper class, the well-known, and the very intelligent.4 Many of the most famous people from Victorian England would be there—from Charles Darwin to Florence Nightingale to Charles Dickens. It was at one of these parties in 1833 that Ada glimpsed Babbage’s half-built Difference Engine. The teenager’s mathematical mind buzzed with possibilities, and Babbage recognized her genius immediately. They became fast friends. The US Department of Defense uses a computer language named Ada in her honor. Babbage sent Ada home with thirty of his lab books filled with notes on his next invention: the Analytic Engine. It would be much faster and more accurate than the Difference Engine, and Ada was thrilled to learn of this more advanced calculating machine. She understood that it could solve even harder, more complex problems and could even make decisions by itself. It was a true “thinking machine.”5 It had memory, a processor, and hardware and software just like computers today—but it was made from cogs and levers, and powered by steam. For months, Ada worked furiously creating algorithms (math instructions) for Babbage’s not-yet-built machine. She wrote countless lines of computations that would instruct the machine in how to solve complex math problems. These algorithms were the world’s first computer program. In 1840, Babbage gave a lecture in Italy about the Analytic Engine, which was written up in French. Ada translated the lecture, adding a set of her own notes to explain how the machine worked and including her own computations for it. These notes took Ada nine months to write and were three times longer than the article itself! Ada had some awesome nicknames. She called herself “the Bride of Science” because of her desire to devote her life to science; Babbage called her “the Enchantress of Numbers” because of her seemingly magical math

Bell’s work, though impressive by any standard, was not without flaws.

He wanted to have whatever he required to create, test, and demonstrate his inventions on hand.

She released him from the strict, structured, and religion-based ‘common’ schools of the time, and instead encouraged him to pursue his interests.

Throwing aside his papers, he plunged between the cars just in time to drag himself and the child clear of the approaching cars.

However, this process of installing a dynamo for each separate building was costly. A centralized power station would solve the problem, so Edison tested the concept in the United Kingdom at the Holborn Viaduct in London.

The success of this event made Edison a household name.

His stated wish was to produce “a minor invention every 10 days, and a big thing every six months or so.

It’s likely Nancy was as much of a supporter of independence for America as her father had been.

Nancy believed wholeheartedly in her son’s abilities, and it was she who is responsible for the young man’s confidence and willingness to pursue his sometimes eccentric interests.

He never returned to journalism in a serious way, but Edison became a prolific journal writer, producing nearly five million pages of notes and observations in his lifetime, and much of what we know about his life, and his inventions, comes from his words.

Edison, on the other hand, was repelled by the thought of an invention to improve hearing.

They are most famous for their film Arrival of a Train which frightened first-time cinemagoers into thinking they were about to be run down.

Edison, never one to overlook an opportunity, was also a keen early-adopter of automobiles. He

Like much of Edison’s work, he and his team excelled at modifying and improving existing inventions to meet market and manufacturing demands.

Young Edison was a keen reader, and he would continue the habit, selecting texts from a broad range of interests, throughout his lifetime, but his interest in Paine’s ideas endured.

Around this same time, Thomas discovered he had a severe hearing loss – perhaps due to his bout of fever.

The profession of telegraphy, though popular, had a less-than-lily-white reputation.

Regardless, the young entrepreneur traveled alone and developed his skills as a salesman. His desire to succeed, and to seek opportunities wouldn’t allow for any impediments. This characteristic sustained Edison throughout his career. He was even bold enough to set up a chemistry laboratory for his experiments, and a small, secondhand printing press in one of the baggage cars! Sadly, Thomas’ formal education ended early, and by his early teens, Edison was considered functionally deaf.

His vision combined his understanding of how gas was distributed at the time, and how telegraphs signals traveled.

The Edison home was a site of frequent visits from neighbors, and Nancy was a welcoming hostess.

the science of how things work became Edison’s consuming passion.

He liked to wander the town, millworks, rail, and shipyards, intent on learning all he could about the goings on around him.

Thomas always made use of whatever was around him to learn more about the world.

Once he slipped into a grain silo and might have suffocated if an older and stronger boy had not rescued him.

Paine was an enlightenment philosopher and pamphleteer who promoted the idea that science should trump religion in daily affairs.

If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.

What set Edison apart was his drive to continue to educate himself long after he had left the classroom.

Still, the publication had several contributing writers and regular subscribers.

In 1864, he came up with the idea that reduced errors in telegraphed messages. Called a Morse Repeater, the invention slowed down the message at the receiving end by punching the dots and dashes of Morse code into a slower running strip of paper, resulting in fewer operator errors. This work carried Edison into maturity and established his reputation for inventiveness

Eventually, Berliner’s patent was deemed invalid in favor of Edison’s. Numerous hearings and dozens of lawsuits were launched in the years that followed. Western Union, Edison, Bell and other vital players wrangled with each other for years in the attempt to hold ownership of telephone technology, and eventually, Bell would become the world leader in telecommunications.

It is possible he did not want to draw attention to his deafness.

Thomas once said he’d last heard a bird sing at age 12.

In the portrait, Nancy is broad across the face, and her eyes are sunken in shadows. Her hair is neatly tucked into a cloth head covering, and she’s dressed in swaths of heavy and pleated taffeta, or perhaps silk. Nancy’s family was not wealthy but fit neatly into the upper-middle classes of their hardworking community.

Deafness, pure and simple, was responsible for the experimentation which perfected the machine.

Worshipping the genius out of vanity. Because we think well of ourselves, but in no way expect that we could ever make the sketch to a painting by Raphael or a scene like one in a play by Shakespeare, we convince ourselves that the ability to do so is quite excessively wonderful, a quite uncommon accident, or, if we still have a religious sensibility, a grace from above. Thus our vanity, our self-love, furthers the worship of the genius, for it does not hurt only if we think of it as very remote from ourselves, as a miracle (even Goethe, who was without envy, called Shakespeare his star of the farthest height, recalling to us that line, "Die Sterne, die begehrt man nicht"—one does not covet the stars).9 But those insinuations of our vanity aside, the activity of the genius seems in no way fundamentally different from the activity of a mechanical inventor, a scholar of astronomy or history, a master tactician. All these activities are explained when one imagines men whose thinking is active in one particular direction; who use everything to that end; who always observe eagerly their inner life and that of other people; who see models, stimulation everywhere; who do not tire of rearranging their material. The genius, too, does nothing other than first learn to place stones, then to build, always seeking material, always forming and reforming it. Every human activity is amazingly complicated, not only that of the genius: but none is a "miracle." From where, then, the belief that there is genius only in the artist, orator, or philosopher? That only they have "intuition" (thus attributing to them a kind of magical eye glass, by which they can see directly into "being")?10 It is evident that men speak of genius only where they find the effects of the great intellect most agreeable and, on the other hand, where they do not want to feel envy. To call someone "divine" means "Here we do not have to compete." Furthermore, everything that is complete and perfect is admired; everything evolving is underestimated. Now, no one can see in an artist's work how it evolved: that is its advantage, for wherever we can see the evolution, we grow somewhat cooler. The complete art of representation wards off all thought of its evolution; it tyrannizes as present perfection. Therefore representative artists especially are credited with genius, but not scientific men. In truth, to esteem the former and underestimate the latter is only a childish use of reason.

As the legendary inventor Thomas Edison famously said, “Genius is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent perspiration.

I do not think there is any thrill that can ago through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success… Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.” ~ N. Tesla